Historian of the Early U.S. Republic

As a historian, my research focuses on early American politics and foreign policy, with an emphasis on the ways the lives, legacies, and historical memory of the founding fathers were used by Americans for a variety of political and diplomatic ends.

My first book project, Addressing America: George Washington’s Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852, reevaluates the importance of George Washington’s presidential Farewell Address in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Farewell Address was a critical document in shaping U.S. foreign policy and political culture, yet has largely disappeared from the historical record beyond discussion of its publication. Click here for more information about the book.

I am currently researching my second book, tentatively titled, Hamilton and Madison: Nationalism and Political Principle in the Early Republic.

Selected Publications

Addressing America: George Washington’s Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852. New Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2015.

“The Founding Fathers and the Election of 1864.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 36 (Summer 2015): 1-25. Available here.

“‘If I Had It in His Hand-Writing I Would Burn It’: Federalists and the Authorship Controversy over George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1808-1859,” Journal of the Early Republic 34 (Summer 2014): 219-42. Available here.

“Manifest Destiny: The Monroe Doctrine and Westward Expansion (1816-1861),” in The Routledge Handbook of American Military and Diplomatic History, The Colonial Period to 1877, eds. Christos Frentzos and Antonio Thompson (New York: Routledge, 2014), 215-22.

“The Congressional Debate over U.S. Participation in the Congress of Panama, 1825-1826: Washington’s Farewell Address, Monroe’s Doctrine, and the Fundamental Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Diplomatic History 30 (Nov. 2006): 813-38. Available here.